Tag Archives: root

SkyRaider Sense 3.5 for the HTC Incredible was released by Ihtp69 and is available via ROM Manager. It's got a really cool new feature that inspired this blog post. The wifi, bluetooth, GPS, airplane mode, update services and display brightness is now adjustable from the status menu. If your toggle buttons are on your desktop you can make room for other stuff. The phone seems a little snappier too.

Oh, and if your getting the annoying OTA update notification, there's something to get rid of that too.

A few weeks ago I rooted my phone to get access to some features made inaccessable by Verizon. This was taken a step further this week when I installed a custom ROM on to replace the stock ROM on my HTC Incredible. I had had enough of the stock ROM when I realized after rooting it that I still couldn't get rid of Skype or Peep easily.

I had to do something and remembered the cool thing about Android being open source software is any can modify it and come up with a custom flavor. This is also the problem. Google research took me on a long search through Android related message boards where the consensus seemed to be a flavor called Skyraider. This flavor also has a variant that includes HTC Sense UI which I prefer over the vanilla Android UI. I downloaded it via ROM Manager which I purchased for $3.99 from the Android Marketplace.

After downloading Skyraider I tried to install it via ROM Manager. What I found out next is the radio software needed to be updated. After that I was good to go and all my crapware was gone. As it turns out it used my old system settings and desktop. In case it forgot I took the precaution by backing everything up with Titanium Backup.

Proceed at your own risk for things can go wrong and brick your phone.

One of the cool things about having an Android phone is the ability to do what you want. Unfortunately the cellphone companies (in my case Verizon) do not allow this out-of-the-box requiring you to "root" your phone (jail-break in the iPhone universe). "Rooting" allows you to do things such as uninstall factory-installed crapware like Skype & Peep and freely use the wi-fi access point feature.

Unfortuately "rooting" your Android phone is dangerous and could brick your $600 phone. Fortunately the folks over at Unrevoked made this a one click process. All I did was uninstall HTC sync and install the HBOOT drivers from the unrevoked wiki instead of the stock HTC drivers. I also had to enable "USB Debugging" accessable via settings > applications > development. After running the Unrevoked package for the Incredible the phone rebooted a couple times, installed some stuff and was rooted in less than 10 minutes.

I tested the wifi access using Wifi Tether and connecting to my iPod Touch to the Incredible. I used wireless_tether_2_0_5-pre11.apk because it runs in Infrastructure mode instead of Ad-hoc mode. I was able to connect to the internet via iPod Touch converting it to an iPhone without the crappy phone part. I haven't tested it but I'm sure I could connect any other wifi enabled device to the internet via my Incredible.

If you intend to 'root' your phone beware and don't take my word for it. It worked for me but proceed at your own risk.